Florida Catholic | Lent Fast Lane

Some live through Lent in fast lane

LAURA DODSON | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 02.22.08

Alba Picinich cooked her and husband’s favorite foods — chicken marsala, homemade pasta, almond cake — then they didn’t eat a bite of it, delivering it instead to shut-ins as a Lenten exercise in fasting and almsgiving.

“The fast is a good thing — especially for the spirit,” said Nick Picinich, who along with his wife lives in Cocoa Beach and belongs to Our Saviour Parish. “You have more time to experience what people who are hungry feel and are fasting because they have to — it brings you to being a more giving person. Alba prepared a meal that we couldn’t even taste — that was a temptation.”

The Piciniches know the Catholic Church’s minimum requirements for fasting and abstinence during the penitential season of Lent — on Fridays no meat, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday no meat, plus only one full meal with two smaller meals sufficient to maintain strength, with some exceptions for age and health. But they, and many other Catholics, choose to go beyond the minimum expectations. And many say they get more out of it than they give up.

“Fasting can help to purify us to have a greater openness to God’s spirit. We can welcome the peace of God into that inner space where sin has been rooted out,” said Third Order Franciscan Father John Mark Klaus, director of the Office of Worship for the Diocese of Venice. Father Klaus conducts parish missions on fasting, a spiritual practice found in all the major religions. “We fast to empty ourselves so that we can more readily surrender to what God wants us to do in life,” he said.

SCRIPTURE SUPPORTS FASTING

Scripture abounds with references to fasting. Lent recalls the 40-day fasts of Moses, Elijah and Jesus in the desert immediately following his baptism by John and subsequent entrance into public ministry. His healing of the sick and freeing of the oppressed was in keeping with Isaiah’s description of fasting (Is 58: 6,7).

The fast the Piciniches plan to follow this Lent is scripturally based. On the Daniel fast they are eating only fruits, vegetables and whole-wheat products, abstaining from meat, fish, dairy and sugar.

Antoinetta Boniella, a parishioner at Our Lady of Lourdes, Palm Harbor, is fasting from food and all but water to drink for seven hours daily.

“I read Scripture and pray, ‘Show me, Lord, the things in my life that need to be changed, that are keeping me from you, from being my better self.’ And it’s not just fasting and prayer — it is giving. I ask God, ‘What is it you want me to give, to do?’ Yesterday, I heard, ‘Go visit someone who’s being transferred to a nursing home.’ It’s the little, the ordinary things — witnessing to the Gospel —it’s not some big mission.”

IT’S NOT ONLY ABOUT FOOD

The self-denial of fasting for some extends beyond food and drink to activities that fill their time.

Shirley Poore, a member of Good Shepherd Parish in Tallahassee and Pax Christi — the Catholic peace movement advocating the eradication of every form of domination and violence — fasts year around, not just during Lent, and also gives up leisure time to work for social justice.

“I fast every Friday for all the hungry, those displaced in the world. Lent is fasting in a special way; putting down the clenched fist and opening our hearts to the needy — the human cost of war, health care, one in five people in Florida live in poverty.”

Poore was adamant: “Make sure you say that I struggle every day with it. I’m rending my heart — I’m not an example. …. It’s daily staying with what God calls me to, instead of what I’d like to do.”

Time also is a factor for Nick Silverio, founder and director of A Safe Haven for Newborns — a nonprofit organization assisting pregnant women and mothers who might abandon their babies. To date, 91 babies have been rescued.

“I’m obviously busy and so involved and I don’t spend as much time as I should trying to get close to the Lord. I’m denying myself — every morning and every night — meditating to be more disciplined. This is my Lenten fast,” said Silverio, who belongs to Christ the King Parish in Miami.

NURTURING RELATIONSHIPS

Another type of fasting is from behaviors that negatively impact relationships with others.

Rolando Gomez, Blessed Sacrament Parish in Tallahassee, is part of a men’s group — Community of Praying Husbands. “We’re married men with a desire to grow in love and service of our God, and we want to imitate St. Joseph in being husbands to our wives and fathers to our children. It’s difficult — we fast from all the things we’d rather be doing on a Saturday morning. This Lent, we’re doing a Jesuit audio retreat,” he said.

Carol Razza, St. Thérèse de Lisieux Parish in Wellington, is fasting in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament one hour each day. Razza, a therapist, considers being a wife of 39 years and mother as God’s greatest blessings.

“The beatitudes are Christ’s vision of fasting — for example, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’ We must fast from angry conflict to be blessed as peacemakers. If couples would embrace the beatitudes for fasting for a healthy marriage, it would bring us to a healthy intimacy as a couple with God.”

In 10-plus years, Erik Vagenius has helped to establish Substance Addiction Ministry teams in 14 parishes in the Palm Beach Diocese. He said he is “fasting and abstaining this Lent from negative and critical conversation that lets the evil keep me from doing God’s work.”

“Negative speech patterns are preventing me from sowing the seeds of hope, healing and reconciliation to God’s people touched by addiction,” said Vagenius, who belongs to St. Patrick Parish in Palm Beach Gardens.

LEAVING COMFORT ZONE

Perhaps the most stringent fast is the one that calls people out of themselves, out of their comfort zones to become more intimately connected with the needs of those whom they don’t see, but with whom they are united.

Neil Michaud of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Port Charlotte, attends daily Mass, fasts and abstains on Fridays, and has been employed in the peace and justice ministry of the Venice Diocese for the past 14 years.

“We are hoping that the people attending our 11th annual Leaven Conference on March 15 as part of their Lenten fast will take on the issues of Catholic social teaching: death penalty, health care and immigration reform; environmental concerns; violence and globalization, among others. As Catholics, we should take action that will lead to better living conditions for the poorest among us.”

Brigitte Gynther, a member of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Immokalee, is 25 years old and a 2004 graduate of the University of Notre Dame who voluntarily makes low wages and lives in solidarity with the farmworkers of her community.

“Lent is a time of reflection and connection with the people who bring food to us — how all of our lives are connected as consumers. The farmworkers pick the food that others eat and others bring food because the workers aren’t paid adequate wages to live.”

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